EPG Grabbing

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About

ICN WARN.PNG Important information:
  • ARGUS TV can’t schedule recordings if it is not in the possession of up-to-date TV guide data.
  • ARGUS TV does not activate one of the below options just by itself and thus
  • After first installation of ARGUS TV, you won't have an EPG nor a pre-installed way to grab XMLTV files from guide providers - this has to be done.
  • For a quick start, consider using DVB-EPG initially, which is natively supported by ARGUS TV


ICN INFO.PNG Please refer also to our Wiki-Article ICN WIKI INLINE.PNG EPG Grabbers


ICN INFO.PNG Types & methods to get your EPG

You have a few options to get guide data into ARGUS TV

  1. ARGUS TV Recorder can extract the data for you from the TV stream - the so-called DVB-EPG
  2. You generate or obtain an XMLTV format xml file and provide this by yourself, chosing your preferred source. ARGUS TV will detect when this changes and update its guide data
  3. You can combine the two methods above
  4. You may use TvGuideImporter


A word about "channels"

ICN INFO.PNG Some important information about "channels":

In ARGUS TV there are two kind of channels, guide channels and TV channels:

  • Guide channels are low-level channels that contain guide data, they're auto-added if a XMLTV file is imported and ARGUS TV finds new channels in it when an exact corresponding TV channel doesn't exist. This may be puzzling at the beginning.
  • TV channels are “real” channels, attached to services, the ones you and I work with, possibly see in the guide, and schedule recordings on.
  • If a Guide channels name is exactly the same as the TV channel, the guide will be automatically mapped during first import.

A TV channel is often, even usually, linked to a guide channel. The guide channel binds the guide data to the TV channel so to speak. This means it's quite possible to have two channels linked to the same guide data. In Belgium we have a channel called "één" and they have an HD version of the exact same programming called "één HD". So in ARGUS TV, both "één" and "één HD" as TV channels and both are associated with the single guide channel "één".

If you import an XMLTV file ARGUS TV will check all channels in the file and auto-create guide channels if needed. And since a guide channel on its own is not so useful it will also auto-create a default TV channel for each guide channel it creates (using the same name as the guide channel). A guide channel, that is not attached to a TV channel, can't be recorded nor played.

If you use ARGUS TV Recorder, you will have to link your channels to services that are found on your digital cards.

If you use MediaPortal TV Server, we need to bring on board a third kind of channel: the tuning channel. This is basically a channel known by the recorder/tuner. So for example, in MediaPortal TV Server's case these are its scanned channels which contain tuning information for the cards they are scanned on and mapped to.


Importing using a XMLTV file

You can use the guide grabber of your choice, and drop the guide XML file in the ProgramData\ARGUS TV\XMLTV. Mostly people schedule a job that will launch a batch file to start fetching the XMLTV file and dropping it at the proper location for import into ARGUS TV.

ARGUS TV will automatically import the data into its database. You can see feedback of this process in the log screen of the ARGUS TV Scheduler Console:

Xmlimport0.png


Importing using DVB-EPG

DVB-EPG is EPG information that is streamed with the TV signal itself.

ICN INFO.PNG Some important information about DVB-EPG:
  • DVB-EPG usually has a higher up-to-dateness than the XMLTV information
  • It usually provides less information, e.g. not all entries include season/episode informations.
  • You can only get, what the station is willing to send. Especially some "low-budget" stations don't provide DVB-EPG at all - or only a very general one
  • DVB-EPG uses your tuners and while doing so, you can't use the tuners for recording - depending a bit on the recorder machine you're using
  • If you suffer from bad signal, grabbing the DVB-EPG parallel to recording puts quite a load to your machine - which could even lead to bad recordings

DVB-EPG must be activated in your recorder.

  • If you use ARGUS TV Recorder, you can select the channels you would want to grab in ARGUS TV Recorder Console
  • If you use MediaPortal TV Server, you do it there
  • If you use both, DVB-EPG and XMLTV import, set the priority in the Settings section of ARGUS TV Scheduler Console


Import using TvGuideImporter

ARGUS TV offers a program called TvGuideImporter to import guide-data from different providers, eg. ClickFinder and Schedules Direct. There is a separate installation guide for TvGuideImporter, so refer to it if you need guidance.

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